Smith's observations were based on many sellers and many buyers. He made his observations before travel was easy and there were not corporations as we know them today much less global corporations. As well, Smith was a dyed in the wool protectionist and he believed the end that supported the means was prosperous communities where sellers and buyers jointly lived.

That is a far cry from the deformed capitalist monster to which Smith's philosophy gave birth.

Modern capitalism has loyalty to no community and no people and is founded on unparalled avarice and is without any redeeming characteristic.

Smith's philosophy to today's corporate privateers is nothing more than a quaint idea useful for propaganda and for spoonfeeding an army of ideological ditto heads who crowd the echo chamber of rightwing talk radio.

[ 26 September 2006: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

And instead of referring to rich and poor we could simply adopt HG Wells' labels: morlocks and Eloi. We're making sacrifices to prop up a wealthy elite class over a hundred and ten years after Time Machine was written. As the cyclops said to Ulysses and the remainder of his men before passing out, MORE WINE!!!

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
Adam Smith used the "invisible hand" as a metaphor to explain an observation for which he had no other explanation. His intent was not to inject a divine or spiritual entity into his observations.

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
Adam Smith used the "invisible hand" as a metaphor to explain an observation for which he had no other explanation.

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http://www.econlib.org/LIBRARY/Smith/smWN.html

[ 26 September 2006: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

I think it was John Locke and his exclusive private property rights where things went wrong. The uberrich today are said to owe this god of capitalism a debt of gratitude.

[ 26 September 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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I think it was John Locke and his exclusive private property rights where things went wrong.

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Originally posted by Brian White:

So, what is the explaination for what he saw?
There has been loads of economic theory since him so someone should have unmasked the owner of the hand by now.

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This is from Wiki:

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The invisible hand is a metaphor created by Adam Smith to illustrate how those who seek wealth by following their individual self-interest, inadvertently stimulate the economy and assist the poor. ...

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And so I think Smith realized how open to interpretation his Wealth of Nations could be to treacherous trickster capitalists and, in words similar to his day, set about describing how business people should act ethically when utilizing their privileges of doing business, or some such.

Ok, but treacherous capitalists have tended to gloss over and neglect altogether what Smith had to say about business ethics while beholdening themselves to his call to go out into the world and be self-interested to the point of being appallingly greedy. Obviously, it could be in their self-interested agendas to bump a few old people off their feet in the race to the pig troff.

Some of the greediest of capitalists, I think, have made Adam Smith's self-interest their only defining characteristic and reason for being. Even though Smith himself recognized that people are capable of much more than self-interest, like civic mindedness, compassion for others, desiring to work toward common goals etc etc, they've since expanded on and magnified this one human trait that really defines them and their goals but not the majority of us. Or perhaps many of us actually are becoming economic theory's one-demensional human model representing collective us acting within and driving the economy, homo economicus. Like Linda McQuaig says of this theoretical person, he's the very person we don't want to be stuck sat next to at dinner somewhere.

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I think it was John Locke and his exclusive private property rights where things went wrong.

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Locke was a man of means and represented other men of means. But he represented men of financial means rather than real property. In his Second Treatise of Civil Government Locke laid out the philosophical groundwork for why men of financial means should have a role in government equal to that of men of proeprty. His argument was that all men owned property even if that property was one's own, physical body. Money was also property equal in value to real property and therefore, men of means such as himself and others like him, ought to have a role in government equal to those who owned real property (often passed down through heriditary lines).

To fully appreciate Locke is to view him through a modern lens. He was not looking for revolutionary change. He was merely looking for a slight modification of the status quo that would allow him a seat at the political table. In short, he was a precursor to a political lobbyist representing narrow interests.

Locke dealt briefly with the land and resources were given by God to "mankind in common", but he wasn't very interested in this shared situation. In an undeveloped state, pristine land wasn't owned by all, but rather by none. Linda goes on to say basically that Locke's argument met few challenges in his day from those whose common interests were being overruled. ie the very poor English people whose interests it was to feed themselves by gleaning the grain leftover from crown harvests. Locke and lawyer types of the day felt that the poor were developing a sense of insolence by coming to expect that right to glean leftover grain.

Peasants found that stone fences and hedges were suddenly erected where there were none before. A hedge or fence seems innocent enough to us today in an age of processed and frozen foods, but for English peasants the new barriers represented a form of terrorism perpetrated from on high. Grain and flour suddenly became more expensive, and there were hungry people running around England. There was starvation. And there were food riots, and people began refusing to work the land for wealthy landowners for pittance wages. Many began moving away into the forests to live free lives. These were obviously protests by the people affected, and they probably could have used a good lawyer to represent their common interests.

And so the new private and exclusive property owned by the elite was suddenly made less valuable. Afterall, the rich couldn't be expected to actually abide by Lockean philospophy that whoever sweats by their brow on the land shall own it. They would need to have the peasants return to the land, but how ?. New labour laws needed to be drafted. Anyone caught by king's men outside of their borough or shire could be horsewhipped and returned to the land to work for wealthy Lords and land barons. Or worse, they could be whipped and made to work for no wages at all. So, the natural laws didn't seem so natural anymore, because now the wealthy landowners needed the full force of the king's sherrif and his men to enforce the new property laws.

Fidel:
If McQuaig is trying to undermine the argument for property rights by idealizing the time before they existed, it's not going to work. Before the Enlightenment, there was no notion of rights at all. Peasants were essentially slave labour on their lord's estate. Sure, they could consider the resources available to them as communal property, but the development of classical liberalism and individual rights meant this system could no longer work.

The effect of property rights was to transfer us away from an age in which wealth was the exclusive domain of land-owners, who based their claims on heredity, conquest, and divine right, to an age where wealth belongs to those who create it.

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Locke's motivations for making the argument aren't logically relevant to the merit of the argument itself, or its ultimate effects.

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I disagree. I think they are. Locke was a powerful and influential thinker. Had he been a property owner his Second Tratise may well have been about why only land is truly property. Just because an argument is logical does not make it necessarily true. For example, I can argue an square object will fit in a square box. Logically, that is correct. But it is not true if the dimensions of the object exceed that of the box.

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If McQuaig is trying to undermine the argument for property rights by idealizing the time before they existed, it's not going to work. Before the Enlightenment, there was no notion of rights at all. Peasants were essentially slave labour on their lord's estate. Sure, they could consider the resources available to them as communal property, but the development of classical liberalism and individual rights meant this system could no longer work.

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It could be argued little has changed. Many believe in wage slavery. It has been suggested slavery is becomes obolete when enough surplus labour exists to convert slaves from bondage where the slave owner provides food, housing, and old age care to wages where the slave is dismissed to his own devices when work shortges occur.

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The effect of property rights was to transfer us away from an age in which wealth was the exclusive domain of land-owners, who based their claims on heredity, conquest, and divine right, to an age where wealth belongs to those who create it.

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I'm interested to know, though, whether you guys will argue that Locke was actually wrong. When a person creates value by doing work, does he not have a right to that value, in that he should have discretion to consume it, trade it, or give it away?

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That wasn't Locke's argument. Locke never addressed how his property was acquired, to the best of my recollection, only that it was property and therefore entitled him and other financially rich men to a seat at the political table. He could have cared less, if a person whose only property was his own being, had any political rights.

[ 29 September 2006: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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Originally posted by Proaxiom:

Fidel:
If McQuaig is trying to undermine the argument for property rights by idealizing the time before they existed, it's not going to work.

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The most striking feature of this growing inequality has been the massive gains of the richest one per cent of income earners at the expense of most of the population," said Campbell, who called for a major assessment of the costs and benefits of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
...
NAFTA came into effect in 1994, five years after the Canada-U.S. free trade deal. In 2005, two-way trade between Canada and the United States approached nearly $500 billion (U.S.), while U.S.-Mexican trade amounted to about $290 billion (U.S.), both sharply higher than when the trade deals began.

However, Campbell said both agreements were supposed to boost living standards for many, help close the productivity gap with the United States, create a more efficient economy and strengthen Canada's social safety net.

Yet there is no evidence that Canada gained a special advantage in the American market, said Campbell, and the country's share of U.S. imports actually fell after 1994.

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That wasn't Locke's argument. Locke never addressed how his property was acquired, to the best of my recollection, only that it was property and therefore entitled him and other financially rich men to a seat at the political table.

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You missed some really important bits in his Second Treatise. The entire discussion of property rights revolves around how property comes to be:

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The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.

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Locke's argument in favour of natural property rights is that we have a natural right to our own bodies, and therefore a right to the product of the labour done by our bodies. Creating value by doing labour entitles the labourer to the right of deciding how that value may be disposed. That right is generally what 'property' means.

Following his reasoning, we would say that a tree in the middle of the forest is commonly owned (being given to mankind by God), but when somebody cuts down the tree it becomes his property: the person who cut it down should have the sole privilege of deciding what should be done with it (should it be made into a chair, cut for firewood, etc).

Fidel:

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It's much easier to make a claim for exclusive property rights if one starts with the assumption that the land belongs to no one.

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He did not claim there should be property rights on virgin resources, including land. He did claim, however, that working land, or building on it, should provide a claim to property.

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As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labour does, as it were, inclose it from the common.

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And here, as I recall being discussed at length in political philosophy courses in university, come the problems in terms of Locke's ideas. He did not adequately address ownership of resources. Here's why:

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Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as good left; and more than the yet unprovided could use.

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The problem, still unaddressed in modern economics, is scarcity of resources. What happens when there isn't enough and as good left for others?

And there was an actual drop in the number of full-time payroll jobs created here in the 14 years after FTA compared with the same period before, ie. when our exports to the U.S. were less, and fewer Canadians were entering the workforce each year. Next to the U.S., Canada is said to own the second largest low skilled, lowly paid, non-unionized workforce as a percentage of total employment in a comparison of developed economies. Coincidentally, our child poverty rates are among the highest.

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Originally posted by Proaxiom:
He did not claim there should be property rights on virgin resources, including land. He did claim, however, that working land, or building on it, should provide a claim to property.

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The political theorist, Anatole Anton, argues that the "right of exclusion" involved in private property is a right that "defies moral justification." He goes on to insist at the very least that those seeking the exclusion should be able to justify it.

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"Taking something from a group and giving it to a single person ... cries out to the democratic sensibility for reasons. ... Private property, from a democratic point of view, amounts to the surrender of democratic control of social resources to private individuals. Surrender might be the right thing to do, but surely some good reasons ought to be given for so doing."

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Locke comes up with just one reason really. And that's the fact that the would-be owner transforms the property by providing his or her labour, something that is universally admired and revered.

And this important part of Locke's argument for toil and sweat of the owner equating to property rights was very similar to another Englishman's who lived just before Locke, Gerard Winstanley. Except that Winstanley, leader of England's Digger Movement at the time, made his argument in favour of common rights.

Winstanley apparently said to the King of the day that there was a point when the peasants would not object to occupation by a foreign army. Common rights of the peasants to dig and plant were respected by the King and his men for a short while thereafter.

[ 29 September 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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The political theorist, Anatole Anton, argues that the "right of exclusion" involved in private property is a right that "defies moral justification." He goes on to insist at the very least that those seeking the exclusion should be able to justify it.

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I'm not familiar with Anton. But why does he single out property rights? Every 'right' is exclusive, whether it be right to free speech, free thought, or life. My right to my own body means I can prevent you from hitting it. My property right to a chair I built or purchased means I can prevent you from sitting in it. What's the difference?

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Winstanley apparently said to the King of the day that there was a point when the peasants would not object to occupation by a foreign army. Common rights of the peasants to dig and plant were respected by the King and his men for a short while thereafter.

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My right to my own body means I can prevent you from hitting it. My property right to a chair I built or purchased means I can prevent you from sitting in it. What's the difference?.

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The point is, this right of exclusivity has been protested and challenged by poor people around the world in need of land to sustain themselves ever since. For example, in Central America, there are vast tracts of the most fertile land for which exclusive rights are still claimed today by about 13 or a few more old families who were granted ownership during the time of Spanish colonialism. But millions of poor people have come to rely on a great deal of that land in the time inbetween and would likely have squatter's rights by modern law. What right do wealthy rancheros have to hire bounty hunters and death squads to murder poor families subsisting on that land, Proaxiom ?. Do you see anything wrong with that ?.

[ 29 September 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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You missed some really important bits in his Second Treatise. The entire discussion of property rights revolves around how property comes to be:

quote:The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.

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Yes, well, you have me there. Such an explicit statement; leaving nothing to one's imagination or interpretation; so clear as to be the exact and mirror opposite of the word 'vague', and somehow I missed it. Oh, well.

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Creating value by doing labour entitles the labourer to the right of deciding how that value may be disposed. That right is generally what 'property' means.

Following his reasoning, we would say that a tree in the middle of the forest is commonly owned (being given to mankind by God), but when somebody cuts down the tree it becomes his property: the person who cut it down should have the sole privilege of deciding what should be done with it (should it be made into a chair, cut for firewood, etc).

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But, but, if I follow the logic, and I think I do, your argument would follow that if you had a pig, and I stole it, slaughtered it, and barbecued it, the meal would be mine by virtue of the labour, correct?

The Cop: He says you took his pig.

Me: I did. But then I invested labour into converting it into dinner. Now, look, I'd offer him some but there just isn't enough.

The Cop: Well, as long as you invested labour into it then. But don't let me catch you with an uncooked pig, okay. Because then there'll be trouble.

[ 29 September 2006: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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For example, in Central America, there are vast tracts of the most fertile land for which exclusive rights are still claimed today by about 13 or a few more old families who were granted ownership during the time of Spanish colonialism. But millions of poor people have come to rely on a great deal of that land in the time inbetween and would likely have squatter's rights by modern law.

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Such a situation, a legacy of feudal times, is quite clearly not an application of Locke's natural right to own property. There is no way to justify under these principles a situation in which some people prevent other people access to a resources that they are not using themselves.

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But, but, if I follow the logic, and I think I do, your argument would follow that if you had a pig, and I stole it, slaughtered it, and barbecued it, the meal would be mine by virtue of the labour, correct?

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The guy who bred and raised the pig has the right to decide what to do with it. The guy who steals the pig is violating that right, taking all the value from the first guy's labour for himself.

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Okay, I'm starting to get it. The first guy steals the tree from the commons and chops it up for firewood. The second guy steals the firewood from the first guy and makes carvings. Now, in the first case, the tree was provided by God so no one in the commons actually invested any labour in the tree so therefore, while the commons "owned" the tree, it was more of an inheritance than an act of labour. But the second guy, in carving the firewood into art, did perform labour but only second. So, in property, their is a form of seniority: he who performs labour first, owns. Okay. But, what if the first guy picked an apple and the second guy peeled it, cored it, cooked it, mashed it, added sugar, and baked a tart, hasn't he added substantially more labour? In property, does seniority always trump effort?

[ 29 September 2006: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose.

The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.

The poor and wretched don't escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.

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In property, does seniority always trump effort?

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Yes. The alternative is a nasty form of utilitarianism, whereby I can steal anything from anyone I want provided I am willing to extract more value from it. This kind of idea is covered nicely in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.

As for 'stealing from the commons', as I said, Locke didn't adequately address the question of how raw resources should be initially allocated. For him, first-come-first-serve was fine because he saw an abundance of resources. But in reality, we acknowledge that not everyone who wants to pick an apple or cut down a tree can realistically do so, so the government sets up systems for deciding who may do so. In our country, the provincial governments automatically 'own' all raw unharvested resources (thus making them, technically, communal), then creates special rights for extracting them, and sells the rights to whomever wishes to make use of the resources. Thus, the community does get automatic benefit from the assumption of the resources by those who would harvest and then sell them, in the form of government revenue which can then be spent on services.

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Originally posted by Proaxiom:

A good example is where I live right now, Milton, where property taxes are set fairly low because the municipal government receives so much money from builders who pay for the right to construct new houses on land. Even though I have nothing to do with the builder or the eventual home buyer, I get benefit from the money paid for removing the land from what you could call 'the commons'.

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Originally posted by Ward:
Let's not forget this capitalist pig.

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I wonder what some of the 'invisible hands' of credit are?

[ 30 September 2006: Message edited by: Bubbles ]

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Seems to be me you shouldn't take from the commons at all for purely personal use. That is just stealing.

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So it should be illegal to pick an fruit from a tree in the forest and eat it?

Should it be illegal to keep a backyard vegetable garden for which you will personally eat all the produce?

There is no contradiction. We inherently own our own labour, and taking the product of someone's labour without their permission is stealing. This was the main thrust of Locke's argument, and interestingly, no one has disputed it.

Whether taking from the 'commons' is stealing is entirely subjective. Since no labour was involved in the creation of resources, on what basis does the commons make its ownership claim? Locke's reasoning that nature belongs to all mankind was religion-based, and I suspect nobody here is going to promote that argument.

There is no fixed notion of ownership where it pertains to natural resources. Therefore, it should be up to society to decide the method by which they should be allocated and exploited. As I said above, our current system requires those who consume resources to first get permission to do so, and also exchange something for it.

The Wiki quote: "The invisible hand is a metaphor created by Adam Smith to illustrate how those who seek wealth by following their individual self-interest, inadvertently stimulate the economy and assist the poor." is misleading, perhaps deliberately so.

[ 01 October 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

Smith's metaphor describes how markets can transform the self-seeking intentions of individual agents into socially optimal outcomes. These days, we'd call it an emergent property of markets: even though no-one is consciously working to attain the social optimum, it happens anyway.

Immediately after his use of the metaphor in the Wealth of Nations, he notes that self-interest working through markets will often generate better outcomes than what would be generated by someone who means well, but who doesn't make use of markets:

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By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.

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[ 01 October 2006: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
Smith's metaphor describes how markets can transform the self-seeking intentions of individual agents into socially optimal outcomes. These days, we'd call it an emergent property of markets: even though no-one is consciously working to attain the social optimum, it happens anyway.

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I guess it's socially optimal to downsize everybody down to $5 an hour so the big boys can walk off with a few tens of millions more in stock options, hey?

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Originally posted by DrConway:

I guess it's socially optimal to downsize everybody down to $5 an hour so the big boys can walk off with a few tens of millions more in stock options, hey?

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An' run off to the Caribbean or Florida with the newly unemployed worker's pension fund, build a multimillion dollar mansion with trinkets, and put it all in your wife's name.

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Or I guess it's socially optimal to knowingly hide dangerous products from consumers, too. Ford Pinto, people?

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And don't forget suzuki sidekick, Gremlins, Vegas, the Volare. And some of the CEO's and managerials of these corporations at the root of disasters should have done hard jail time: Union Carbide@Bhopal, the Great Molasses Explosion, Chevron-Nigeria pipeline explosion 1998, Exxon Valdez, Azote de France factory explosion, toy factory- Thailand 1993, Minamata Bay, Japan, Love Canal, Hanford Washington, and an endless string of commercial mining disasters around the world.

Capitalists and upstanding Londoners protested changes to child labour laws reducing the number of hours they could be put to work up dirty narrow chimneys in homes of the rich and down mine pits dragging tubs of coal till they coughed blood as gob holes filled with slack. They said the new restrictions would be interfering with "the market"

[ 01 October 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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To justify the robber baron culture, America's business educators and economists falsely cite their demigod of laissez-faire market economics, Adam Smith. Little do they know that Adam Smith in fact scathingly castigated the Bush type of government-business collusion and unfair taxes, Wal-Mart's exploitations of labor and communities, and robber barons' hubris. No where in his 900-page book, The Wealth of Nations, does Adam Smith even imply that those who knowingly harm others and society in their pursuit of personal greed also benefit their society. He rejects the notion that a corporation exists to make money without ethical constraints.

Yoshi Tsurumi is Professor of International Business at Baruch College, the City University of New York, 17 Lexington Avenue, New York, New York 10010.
Tel: 646-312-3286 E-Mail: [email protected]

Bill Totten

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Smith was also against business people and guilds meeting and colluding to defraud the public of their interests:

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People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is im-possible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and jus-tice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.

A regulation which obliges all those of the same trade in a particular town to enter their names and places of abode in a public register, facilitates such assemblies...

A regulation which enables those of the same trade to tax themselves in order to provide for their poor, their sick, their widows, and orphans, by giving them a common interest to manage, renders such assemblies necessary.

An incorporation not only renders them necessary, but makes the act of the majority binding upon the whole.

The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter X

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But all that remains of this in neo-con and con thought is that unions are very bad indeed.

[ 01 October 2006: Message edited by: siren ]

Adam Smith's invisible slap

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To quote Noam Chomsky: "Adam Smith is the guy we are all supposed to love, but not supposed to read." Conservatives love to use Smith to justify Darwinian-style, international globalization. In reality, Smith's famous "invisible hand" comment, when taken in context, shows that he put his faith in local economies, not international corporations, for long-term prosperity.

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[ 01 October 2006: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]

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There is no contradiction.

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We inherently own our own labour, and taking the product of someone's labour without their permission is stealing. This was the main thrust of Locke's argument, and interestingly, no one has disputed it.

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In fact, you dispute it. You say, on one had, if you steal a tree from the commons and chop it into wood your labour makes it your property. But if I steal the chopped wood from you and carve it into something else, that is not okay by virtue of the labour you put into it as though the labour of nature, considerably greater in growing a tree than cutting it down, doesn't count. Or as though the labour the tree performs, for everyone of us, from sequestering carbon to recycling our oxygen, doesn't count. Why not?

Well, the answer is simple: Because for Locke, and his contemporaries, and I would add a lot of his proponents, the only property that counts is his own.

Locke provided a self-centred and self-interested philosophical argument that can't and doesn't hold up to scrutiny but has formed the foundation for the externalization of cost and the privatization of common wealth: i.e. the resources of the commons are stolen for private profit while the wastes and harm produced are returned to the commons to be absorbed by all vis-a-vis poisoned air, water, soil, and bodies.

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Of course there is a contradiction. The contradiction begins with theft from the commons.

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Whether taking from the 'commons' is stealing is entirely subjective. Since no labour was involved in the creation of resources, on what basis does the commons make its ownership claim? Locke's reasoning that nature belongs to all mankind was religion-based, and I suspect nobody here is going to promote that argument.

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Or as though the labour the tree performs, for everyone of us, from sequestering carbon to recycling our oxygen, doesn't count. Why not?

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Now we're going down a very odd road indeed. Trees labour? Are you saying trees own themselves, so no human can legally cut one down or pick its fruit unless we get permission from the tree itself?

I think we define labour as something only humans do. I'm not big on the idea of extending human rights to inanimate objects.

Let's drop the ad hominem on John Locke. It doesn't at all contribute to a rational argument. Whether a philosopher owns slaves, tortures puppies, or fucks sheep, it doesn't have any bearing on whether his ideas are right or wrong.

You didn't answer my question:
Should it be prohibited to pick an apple from a tree in a forest and eat it?

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Should it be prohibited to pick an apple from a tree in a forest and eat it?

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Yes, my God created it, not yours.

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Is it unreasonable to grow a vegetable garden outside my residence, and expect that I should be the only person allowed to pick the produce? Since it is a product of land, a common good, then if I wake up one morning and neighbours have devoured everything in it, I should have no complaint, right? They didn't any more steal from me than I stole from them by planting seeds.

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Whether taking from the 'commons' is stealing is entirely subjective. Since no labour was involved in the creation of resources, on what basis does the commons make its ownership claim? Locke's reasoning that nature belongs to all mankind was religion-based, and I suspect nobody here is going to promote that argument.

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You say there was no labour involved, but you are viewing the question as Locke viewd it: from a narrow, selfish, and self-interested perspective. Nature worked damn hard to make that tree that provides benefits to all of us that you would steal from all of us and claim owvership of on the basis of consumption. Your entire argument, Lockes entire philosophy, rests on the premise that you can take from the commons, or from those you don't recognize as equals (or sometimes even humans), because your needs, and your needs being abstract as opposed to life sustaining, take precedence
over all others. In a word it is arrogant.

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Are you saying trees own themselves, so no human can legally cut one down or pick its fruit unless we get permission from the tree itself?

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I think we define labour as something only humans do. I'm not big on the idea of extending human rights to inanimate objects.

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It is such arrogance that contributes to the state of world in decline.

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Let's drop the ad hominem on John Locke. It doesn't at all contribute to a rational argument. Whether a philosopher owns slaves, tortures puppies, or fucks sheep, it doesn't have any bearing on whether his ideas are right or wrong.

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You didn't answer my question:
Should it be prohibited to pick an apple from a tree in a forest and eat it?

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Is it unreasonable to grow a vegetable garden outside my residence, and expect that I should be the only person allowed to pick the produce? Since it is a product of land, a common good, then if I wake up one morning and neighbours have devoured everything in it, I should have no complaint, right? They didn't any more steal from me than I stole from them by planting seeds.

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Did they offer you sauce?

It is not my argument that one owns property by virtue of his labour alone. It your argument and Locke's. And Locke never argued that those who required property without even a bit of labour, through inheritance, should be deprived of any property or political rights.

My argument would be what you take you return. So if you remove something from the commons you give something of equal value in return and you ensure the continued sustainability of the commons.

Brian White makes very good points about the destructive and oppressive and unsustainable nature of the capitalist economy.

But, no, these aren’t based on Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” theory. Rather, they represent in part what he warned about in the capitalist system.

In fact, Adam Smith has been about as misquoted, falsely appropriated and unduly maligned as Karl Marx. Corporate apologists and think tanks like to celebrate Smith as a hero of capitalism. In fact, he was one of its biggest critics and an opponent of the growing power of the industrial capitalist class, as well as the long established merchant and financial capitalists of the colonial era.

The actual “invisible hand” quote is this:

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"Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally indeed neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good."(The Wealth of Nations).

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The idea here was that in a market place where things are relatively equal for all of the participants (this is something completely suppressed by capitalist apologists), there is a supposedly self-regulating mechanism that arises from open free trade between individuals that seek s to accommodate everyone to a reasonable degree.

He never said that this was the dominant practice of the capitalist economies of his day. In fact, he said this about what was going on then:

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"A monopoly granted either to an individual or to a trading company has the same effect as a secret in trade or manufactures. The monopolists, by keeping the market constantly understocked, by never fully supplying the effectual demand, sell their commodities much above the natural price, and raise their emoluments, whether they consist in wages or profit, greatly above their natural rate." (vol. I, bk. I, ch. 7.)
§ "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice." (vol. I, bk. I, ch. 10.)

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So while he saw an invisible hand regulating the market place in principle, he also noticed a very visible, albeit largely hidden, hand was at work in the form of the capitalist system, as the monopolization of business and markets was inevitable under a capitalistic framework.

And contrary to what we keep hearing, Smith was not anti-union. He did disagree with the practice of many guilds in his day of restricting how many of their members could start up businesses. (Many guilds had two senior craft positions: first, the master craftsmen, who had learned the trade and could set up their own shops; and second, the journeymen, who also learned the trade but could not set up shop, so they would “journey” to find work elsewhere).

They did this in order to prevent too many shops chasing too little work and forcing each other out of business and inducing greater poverty on an already poverty stricken public. Smith said this was an unnecessary restriction of trade, as the resulting lower prices would help alleviate poverty by making goods more affordable.

But in terms of people forming cooperative associations around their labour, especially when confronted with the oppressive boss-employee relationship, he wrote this before his death:

[QOUTE] Surely as the man who raises his arm as to shield from the blow of an attacker, the labourer of a trade, in his natural desire for the comfort and protection of others, will combine with those whom he sees as having a common interest against the growing monopolistic power of the master.( Essays on Philosophical Subjects (published posthumously 1795) [/QUOTE]

And, about the British and French capitalist class, he also wrote:

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Hear, ye men of business and commerce and property, so self-anointed in your moral superiority, share interests among yourselves that are not in the interests of the public. You desire freedom of trade for yourselves, but not for those you employ. You seek state protection of your property, yet you urge the state to take it from others when it suits your interests.

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the quality of owning freezes you forever into 'I,' and cuts you off forever from the 'we.' -- The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck

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[ 04 October 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Bubbles:

Just make sure you read the genetic fine print of the seeds you use, Monsanto can be a stickler.

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